I don´t know, zero, nothing, whatever the system is

A select few (namely my siblings, who I´m sad weren´t able to join me on this journey) already know that it´s about horseback riding because of the title--listen to Jerry Seinfeld: I´m telling you for the last time, it´s glorious and you won´t regret it (even if you don´t like the show, it´s no excuse, because i´ve converted millions, ok millions might be a lie, but whatever)

So anyways, last night Lizi, Cynthia, and I ventured by bus to a finca in Santa Elena. In Spanish classes we always learned that the translation of finca is farm, but really it´s more like cabin...one colombian tried to tell me it was a summer house, but I was like dude, you live in the city of eternal spring, you can´t have a summer house. So anyways, Santa Elena is on a mountain, with intense curves and inclines to handle in a bus, so of course when our bus had to make a complete stop mid-mountaining there was no way we could get that baby in gear after...everyone had to get off the bus, walk to the top of the hill, and then get back on.

We made it successfully to the finca, where we joined lots of other trainees from Medellin, --Brazil, Slovakia, Mexico, Ukraine, and the U.S., originally. We sat around a camp fire, roasted marshmallows, and listened to music...it was glorious, but we headed to bed early because we had been out late the night before (a night that involved Cynthia, Lizi, and I being forced to dance on the tables at a club that we went to: what I thought would be only one song turned into at least 15 minutes and a contest! But we did win, so, another story for another day) Anyways, there was a shortage of beds for the 11 people sleeping there so Cynthia and I had to jump into a (definitely smaller than normal) twin sized bed. But not without her first asking, "Can I be little spoon?" haha I of course said yes, but not without first remembering that fateful night when Carybeth was big spoon, Ben was little spoon, and Ben insisted, "Molly, this is my bed," while laying on the carpet of our family room floor. It was really cold, but when I woke up I realized Jason had faired worse than I, as he was just wrapped in a clear plastic tarp on a cushion on the ground. All I could say was, "you WOULD do that."

Anyways, this morning we rode horses on the mountain...I have to say, I remember myself being more of a pro from my girl scout days on the Swinging W ranch...I can´t say that I ever got to the point of being one with the horse today. Instead I have bruised inner thighs and I´m quite certain my butt bones were physically widened from all of the trotting. I did not get to ride gluestick or almostdead, I think my horse´s English name was Unruly, or maybe just I´majerk (I can think of a few others too, but I´m going to keep it G-rated) Anytime I pulled on the reins to stop Unruly would just rear it´s head at me and keep running.

And boy did he like to run. Picture this: these horses were rather skinny, so I felt like I was sitting on a peak, his spine, rather than a solid and flat surface (I like fat horses, because on a fat horse you don´t feel like you could fall to either side any minute). These saddles were not strapped on or underneath the horse in anyway, it was a square of blanket with a free floating saddle on top, and reins attached. I take that back, if you were lucky you had one little string-like thing that looped from the saddle underneath the tail, that I´m pretty sure was actually doing nothing. So anyways, this setting can make things all quite frightening when your horse is running 90 miles an hour and you realize you, and your saddle since it´s not attached, are now lifting at least 10 inches into the air and smashing back down again at each gallop. Needless to say, stop commands in spanish, english, No´s, and Oh´s were not successful. My last attempt was, "Don´t you want to just take a damn break?" As you can imagine that also worked to no avail. The situation finally resolved itself when we caught up to one part of my group whose horses were walking. Thank heavens peer pressure is alive and well in horse packs, herds, flocks? Alex from Ukraine asked me what you call a group of horses this weekend...anyone know?